


Basic Mandarin for Lazy Vigilantes

by ras_al_goose



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Dick Grayson is a Talon, Humor, M/M, mostly pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 10:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20928473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ras_al_goose/pseuds/ras_al_goose
Summary: Jason has to learn Mandarin for a mission, but thankfully he's heard of this cool new app called Talonlingo that absolutely does not send an armed owl person to come after you if you don't keep your streak.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> art by catkir ([twitter](https://twitter.com/wondercatkir)/[tumblr](https://catkir.tumblr.com/))
> 
> tribute to all the fictional cats that were sacrificed while i struggled to write this fic

“And that brings me to my next question: how’s your Mandarin?”

Jason has not been expecting this. He had only wanted to raid the pantry at Wayne Manor when he’d opted to head downstairs, swing by the Batcave to check in on Bruce, maybe crack a few jokes at the old man’s expense. Bruce would be turning 40 in a few years, and Jason needed to practice taunting him over his (nonexistent) arthritis.

Instead, he found Babs holding court with Bruce and Cass. It seemed serious.

Apparently, he was being drafted into a mission. 

In six months, Babs had explained, the Penguin would be hosting a gala for leading members of a Chinese cult-and/or-criminal-organization called the Three Eyes, and Jason would be infiltrating. He'd play the role of a charmingly idiotic white American, socialize with the cultists-and/or-gangsters, and hope to plumb information about their operations.

And, this being a strictly information-gathering mission, Jason wouldn’t really have the occasion to kill anybody. That was still a sore point.

“I don’t speak any fucking Mandarin,” said Jason. “Why can’t the old man do it?”

Bruce shifted. Jason suspected his sometime-mentor enjoyed the nickname, if enjoyment were something he was capable of.

“I’ll be off-world on League business,” said Bruce. 

Jason had a sneaking suspicion he just had a dentist appointment, but, okay. Bruce continued:

“No one else is available on that day. But you shouldn't worry. The Three Eyes are based in Tianjin, so they’ll speak fairly clear Northern Mandarin, for which many language-learning resources are available. It isn’t too difficult to pick up if you’re already familiar with another language in the Sino-Tibetan family.”

“Uh,” said Jason, “I can speak German.”

Babs shrugged. “I’ll send you some PDFs or something. It honestly shouldn’t be that bad. You won’t have to learn how to read or write. Just verbal comprehension.”

Jason couldn’t believe he was really getting roped into this.

"I can't wear a wire?"

"It's in Penguin's wacky underground ice cavern," said Babs. "You know how it is."

Jason did know how it was. No reception, and extremely cold. For no good reason.

"I trust that you can carry out this mission," said Bruce, and it was all over. "I made a good decision to take you on as my first mentee, and I have never been disappointed by your intellect."

It gave Jason a traitorously warm feeling to hear that Bruce trusted him to do anything. The lost street kid inside of him was perking up his ears, ready to suffer for the approval of his father-shaped figure. Manipulative bastard.

"I hate this," said Jason. Babs smiled.

"So you're in?" she asked.

"I guess so," said Jason. He looked at Cass and gave her an inquisitive two thumbs up. "Tutoring?"

"I’m Cantonese," said Cass, smiling.

“I know you’re Cantonese, but do you also speak Mandarin?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tutor me?”

“No.”

Jason groaned.

——

It had been a while since Jason lived in the Manor. There was some dumb soft part of him that loved Bruce, it really did, but that didn't mean he necessarily liked the man. And he'd never been completely comfortable at the Manor, wandering around an echoing hundred-year-old building with generations-worth of bougie heirlooms just waiting to be broken. Sure, his bed had been nice and big and soft, and Alfred's cooking was always a joy, but getting into one-sided shouting fights with Bruce (it was always Jason doing the shouting) over breakfast wasn't something he particularly missed.

He returned to his apartment, on the second floor of a cute brownstone complex in a quiet residential street, the kind with baby strollers and little dogs. The kind of building he, as a child, thought rich people lived in—until Bruce Wayne swooped in and he learned about a whole other kind of rich people. 

Laying back in bed with his computer, Jason opened up the first of the videos Bruce had sent him. _You should learn Mandarin puns and idiomatic phrases_, Bruce had written in the email.

The video appeared to be of some kind of stand-up comedy double-act routine. Two men, both wearing ridiculous smiles, stood behind a pair of microphones.

"兩片寿司相遇了," said one of the men onscreen. "为什么它们不互相问候?"

"因为都不熟!" replied the other. The audience laughed.

"The fuck," said Jason quietly, to himself.

In his younger years—and sure, he was in his early twenties, but he was old enough to think of himself as having had younger years—language-learning came much more easily. As a Robin, he’d collected new languages the way another kid his age might’ve collected comic books. Studying Classical Latin and Ancient Greek, on top of modern German, had unlocked a number of Western European languages for him. He’d picked up Dari on a mission to Kabul, and that had been his entry into the Iranic language family. And maybe a lot of his vigor and enthusiasm for language study had been tied to the fact that he’d been an impressionable kid just wanting to impress Bruce. But he was good at this. 

He’d been good at this. His eyes flicked back to the screen. One of the men slapped the other on the head. The audience laughed again.

Nope.

Jason closed out the video and opened up the PDF that Babs had sent over. The filename was _Standard Chinese: A Modular Approach, vol. 1_.

>   
_  
During the past century, various systems have been proposed for representing the sounds of Chinese with letters of the Roman alphabet. One of these romanizations, Hanyu Pinyin, has been adopted officially in the PRC. Pinyin uses all of the letters in the American English alphabet except v, and adds the letter ü. The spellings of some of the consonant sounds are rather arbitrary from an English-speaking point of view, but for every consonant sound there is only one letter or one combination of letters, and vice versa. You will find that each vowel letter can stand for different vowel sounds, depending on what letters precede or follow it in the syllable. The four tones are indicated by accent marks over the vowels, and the Neutral tone by the absence of an accent mark:_
> 
> _High: mā_  
Rising: má  
Low: mă  
Falling: mà  
Neutral: ma  
  


Jason's eyes were glazing over. This was some nerd shit. He flopped over onto his belly and pulled out his phone. Jason was the kind of guy who'd enjoyed learning Latin, so he was definitely sort of a nerd, but he knew a much bigger nerd who would probably be glad to summarize all of this for him.

“Hey kid,” he typed. “Do you by any chance speak Mandarin and feel like teaching me?”

Three bubbles indicated Tim was responding immediately. That kid needed a life.

“So I’ve studied Wenzhounese which is in the Wu Chinese family though it’s mutually unintelligible with other languages in the Wu Chinese family as well as Mandarin, it has some similarities to Hokkien but is in some ways the Basque of Chinese languages.”

Jason rolled his eyes. That was a lot of words just to explain that no, Jason, I don’t speak Mandarin, I can’t teach you.

Tim was still typing.

“Of course, if necessary, I could give you an overview of the usage of Hanyu Pinyin and diacritics to denote tones, as well as an introduction to the basic grammatical structure which I think you’ll find actually quite intuitive. If you’re interested in the writing system you should refer to The New Integrated Chinese Reader which I’m sure Babs has a PDF for.”

Babs did, in fact, include a PDF of _The New Integrated Chinese Reader_ in the “for extra credit!” section of her email. Jason was not, in fact, interested.

Tim was still typing.

“Many textbooks and learning programs will have you create mnemonics for each character, but I personally found the best way for me to do it was to use the method taught to actual Chinese (and Japanese) children where you just write each character a couple hundred times and do it through rote memorization.”

Jason literally fucking hated Tim. “I literally fucking hate you,” he texted.

There was a pause.

Tim started to type again.

“You could also try Talonlingo.”

Apparently, it was a language-learning app. According to Tim, it probably wasn’t a great resource for someone who wanted to seriously sit down and learn a new language, that was the kind of thing that took a bit more dedicated time and effort than a gamified education app was necessarily intended for. But for the purposes of this particular mission, Jason was only trying to eavesdrop on a few weird criminals, not analyze classical poetry. (Because he had done that, with Omar Khayyam, and that had been fun, but difficult.)

So Jason downloaded the app and made an account. There was something called “Talonlingo Plus,” and Jason bought it immediately with the credit card Bruce had given him for work-related expenses. It was only $9.99 a month, but it gave Jason a little bit of satisfaction to ding Bruce’s bank account, even if for a tiny amount.

A friendly little brown owl danced on the screen. In the top left, an icon of a five-starred red flag appeared.

“Ni hao,” said a robotic voice.

  
  


Jason grinned. He could definitely play some dumb multiple-choice phonics game. He easily finished the first five lessons, bringing him to the end of the “Greeting 1” unit. He learned how to say hello, some pronouns, and the words for “mom” and “dad”. He could definitely do this.

A speech bubble appeared next to the owl. “Remember to practice every day!”

Yes. Definitely.

——

And it really did go well for a while. Keeping up with Chinese on Talonlingo only took about twenty minutes per day, and Jason was free to go about his daily life. Babs was taking care of the majority of the other preparations required for this mission, so that all Jason was responsible for was studying enough to be able to understand some gangsters’ conversations. 

Namely, there was going to be a shipment of about a hundred kilograms of heroin arriving in Gotham Harbor at an unknown time. Jason’s mission was to eavesdrop enough to decipher when the shipment what arrive, at which dock, and—if possible—the identity of the buyer. 

It just really wasn’t that bad, especially with Babs doing all the logistics planning. Jason was starting to think that Bruce’s trust in him wasn’t misguided after all. He easily finished “Numbers 1,” as well as “Time 1” and “Time 2”. He kept up with his patrol schedule and had time to wrap up the loose ends on his previous case, some halfwitted drug lord who’d tried to use a Bludhaven casino for money laundering.

Bludhaven was doing better these days, now that Jason was spending half his time there. The city would do well with a full-time vigilante, but that was going to have to be someone who wasn’t Jason. He was still a Gotham street kid at heart, and he was pretty sure living in the Blud would cause him literal spiritual damage. Gotham was grimy and dangerous and violent, but Bludhaven was tacky.

He was biking home from a day-trip to Bludhaven, when he realized that it was just a little past midnight, and he hadn’t done his daily Talonlingo lesson. _Oh well_, thought Jason. He wasn’t going to be too militant about keeping his Talonlingo streak; he wasn’t in this to play the long game.

The moment he opened his door door, though, he knew something was wrong. 

Someone was here. Jason could feel it. He’d left his helmet and body armor stashed downstairs (like an idiot) but thankfully, he was still armed. He drew his gun, and advanced slowly and quietly through his living room.

Jason mentally ran through a laundry list of adversaries who could have infiltrated his apartment. It had to be someone very good, first to have figured out his address, and then to have gotten past the number of custom security measures he’d set up. His house was thoroughly booby-trapped. It was like Home Alone but with murder. 

Whoever had managed to break in was very, very dangerous. It wouldn’t have been his most recent target, the Bludhaven casino guy: the man was an idiot, and despite his drug empire, Jason doubted he had enough money in his coffers to hire someone of this caliber. Black Mask, however, certainly did, and still held quite a few grudges. There were probably a few members of the Untitled around, as well—and Jason really didn’t feel like fighting a thousand-year-old super-being tonight.

What concerned him most, probably, was the fact that his address was apparently compromised. He liked this apartment, goddammit, and now he was going to have to find a new one.

He stepped into the hallway, and suddenly he was braced against the wall, could see the sharp edge of a blade positioned at his neck. A svelte figure in a leather bodysuit, edged in gold, stood before him. He was strapped with more knives and wearing a pair of round goggles that looked strangely familiar.

This was bad. Jason might not survive this one. The intruder was fast, too fast for Jason to follow. He’d had been completely on-guard, gun drawn, and still managed to be taken by surprise. If he weren’t about to get fucking fileted right now, he’d be deeply impressed.

Also, Jason’s type had always been “people who could probably kill me if they tried hard enough.” But that was psychoanalysis for a different day, if that day ever came. Which was looking doubtful at this rate.

“Jason Todd,” the man said. “You broke your streak.”

“What?”

“You should review ‘Numbers 1’ and keep your streak—or I’ll visit again,” said the stranger, resheathing his knife and releasing Jason.

“How did you get this address?”

“It was on the credit card you used to pay for Talonlingo Plus.”

“You’re from Talonlingo?” Jason could hear his voice get higher with incredulity. 

“Keep your streak, Jason Todd,” said the man, “or I’ll visit again.”

Then he was gone, out the window, into the night. Jason knew he should’ve been a bit more shaken by the sudden appearance of an armed stranger in his home, but he’d moved with such a fluid grace and incredible speed, and Jason had to admit he found himself very impressed. Maybe slightly aroused. Well, that was something he was going to have to explore later.

In the meantime, he had a nerd to yell at. He pulled out his phone and dialed angrily. He hoped Tim was asleep, so he could wake him up.

Tim answered on the first ring, because some kids apparently have no friends and nothing better to do than answer the phone with way too much promptness.

“You neglected to tell me,” Jason growled, “that Talonlingo will literally send a knife guy to threaten you if you break your streak.”

“Oh, you met Talon,” said Tim. “You must’ve gotten Talonlingo Plus.”

“I thought that was just to enable offline mode?”

“Yeah,” said Tim. “Offline mode means a knife guy comes to threaten you, offline.”

Jason rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Why would anyone pay for that feature?”

“Well, you did.”

Fair, Jason supposed. But still.

“Is that not weird to you? Like is none of that whole… premise… weird to you?”

“Just keep your streak,” said Tim. “It’ll probably be fine.”

  
  
♥ catkir ([twitter](https://twitter.com/wondercatkir)/[tumblr](https://catkir.tumblr.com/)) ♥   


The next time Jason broke his streak was not his fault. Really, really not his fault. He had been chasing down a subterranean thief called Man Mole, who operated throughout Gotham’s subway system and had been breaking into transit card vending machines to take the cash. He was also an eccentric who dressed up like a mole, and had also never physically hurt anyone. Bruce had decided this was a bit too low-priority, as he had better supervillains to chase after.

But the appearance of Man Mole had led the Gotham Transit Authority to try to compensate for its losses by raising fare prices, which obviously impacted the city’s impoverished, and Jason was, if anything, a champion of the destitute. 

Jason had mapped out Man Mole’s pattern of transit card vending machine robberies and deduced the location of his probable hideout. Now all had to do was go down there, track the guy down, and scare the living daylights out of him. Just so he wouldn’t do it again. Certainly, Jason wasn’t exactly known for his delicate treatment of his enemies, but he wasn’t about to use lethal force on a mere thief. No, he was just going to wave his gun around until Man Mole promised to knock it off.

The plan involved waiting until bleak o’clock in the morning, when the trains ran infrequently, so he could take advantage of the long waiting time between trains to scrabble down onto the tracks and follow them to an abandoned station near the end of the NR line. There, Jason turned on his flashlight and easily discovered Man Mole’s lair. Or nest? Do moles live in nests? Anyway, Jason discovered where that weirdo had constructed his base of operations, a cavern outfitted with an elaborate map of all the transit card vending machines in the Gotham subway system, a cot for sleeping, and a veritable heap of cash and coins. 

No Man Mole, though, so Jason waited. He could have taken out his phone and done his daily Talonlingo Mandarin practice, but the light from the screen would have signaled his location. So Jason waited silently in pure darkness. If he were Bruce, he probably would have meditated, or some shit like that, to keep his mind sharp and alert. Empty your mind, sharpen your breathing. Focus your intent.

But he wasn’t Bruce, so instead, Jason daydreamed about the cheeseburger he’d get after this mission. Maybe something fancy, with mushrooms and Swiss cheese on it. Yeah.

Jason wasn’t sure how he managed to dodge the blade that swung towards him in the dark. It was so quick and sudden and, even with the night-vision mode in his helmet, he could only just make out a man-shaped blur of heat and speed. He could hear a sharpened edge sing as it sliced through the air, maybe an inch away from his neck. 

It was entirely a panic reaction. Jason caught his attacker by the wrist, disarmed him, leveraged his momentum to redirect him against the wall, and pinned him. It all happened in the space of seconds; Jason only realized afterwards how rapidly adrenaline had surged through him, how his pulse pounded heavily in the back of his throat. He could hear the other man breathe as he exhaled, but despite being so close he couldn’t entirely make out his features. He seemed to be wearing something over his eyes, like large round goggles and—

“You caught me,” said the attacker, with a tone of disbelief. 

Jason had heard that voice before. It all came together.

“Knife guy? From Talonlingo? Shit, I knew I forgot something today.”

And Jason had been doing so well lately, too. He’d learned so many words for different professions. Teacher, manual worker, waiter. He’d even gone the extra mile and learned 私刑, vigilante, for if he ever needed to tell someone his actual real-life profession. 

大家好！我叫贾森。我21岁。我住在高谭市。我是一个私刑。你们呢？  
(_Hello everyone! I’m Jason. I’m 21 years old. I live in Gotham City. I’m a vigilante. How about you?_)

“No one’s ever caught me before,” said the Talonlingo knife guy. “Who are you, Jason Todd? What are you? Why are you dressed like the Red Hood?”

Great. The knife guy not only had his name and address from his credit card, but now he also knew that he was the fucking Red Hood. His identity was blown.

“Listen,” said Jason, unholstering one of his guns. “You—”

“My lair!” screeched an unknown voice. “You’ve intruded upon my lair!”

Keeping his attacker pinned, Jason turned and shone his flashlight directly at their new guest. It was Man Mole, who hissed and withdrew from the bright light.

“Rise, my children!” shrieked Man Mole. “Cleanse our home of this surface-dwelling filth!”

Jason didn’t like the sound of that. He also really, really didn’t like the soft patter that seemed to come from a distance but built quickly into what soon became a fucking horde of monstrous moles, swarming up from somewhere along the subway tracks, each mutated to the size of a large dog.

God, but the Gotham subway system was shitty.

Soon, while Man Mole surreptitiously made his escape, Jason was having to fight his way through hundreds of giant moles, all squeaking and gnashing their teeth. They teemed around him, a throng of oily, furry masses, claws threatening to shear into his body armor. At one point, a mole managed to fully launch itself at Jason’s head, though it was quickly sliced in half by an unseen blade. Jason would have taken the time to thank the Talonlingo man, but he was a little busy with another mole that had started gnawing on his foot.

Then Jason looked at the time display on his helmet monitor, and had an idea. He took his erstwhile knife assailant by the wrist, shouted “trust me!”—and they both leapt down onto the tracks, surrounded by a swarm of moles.

Please don’t be late, Jason thought. Please, for once in his goddamn life, could the Gotham City subway please just arrive on time—

A rumble in the distance, then a whistle and a flash of light, and suddenly there was a train hurtling towards them at full speed. The moles scattered; Jason grabbed the other man and pressed both their bodies safely against the side of the platform as the train passed by.

Once the train was gone, they hurried down the tracks to the nearest station and climbed up onto the lit platform. They were covered in mole guts. A few bleary-eyed early-morning commuters gave them confused looks. 

It was probably fine, they were Gothamites and they’d most likely seen worse. Jason turned to the Talonlingo man to make that very remark, but he was already gone.

——

Their third meeting occurred the next day, and it was on purpose.

Jason pointedly did not do any Talonlingo exercises that day, and was sitting patiently in his living room, fully armed and armored, waiting. No helmet; no part of his identity was still a secret anyway.

“We gotta stop meeting like this, knife guy,” Jason greeted him as he entered through a window. Still had no idea how he managed to slip the motion-sensor trap.

“Then stop breaking your streak. And call me Talon.”

“Is that your name?”

“I don’t have a name. Call me Talon.”

Jason sighed and tapped the barrel of his gun impatiently against his leg. “All right, man. Talon. What’s going on here? Why’d you help me with those moles?”

A pause. Talon was mostly expressionless behind his large round goggles, but he seemed to be struggling to figure out what exactly to say. Jason looked at him: he was wearing the same suit as the one he’d worn the first night, and presumably, down in the subway tunnel as well. Deep brown with gold accents. He was muscular but lithe, smaller than Jason, built more for agility than raw power. He seemed young, maybe around Jason’s age. He was unnaturally pale. His face—at least the part Jason could see—had a delicate quality. Like porcelain. Strangely beautiful.

Jason didn’t really know how he felt about that.

“You can fight,” responded Talon, finally. “I’ve never been assigned to someone who could fight like you. It’s been a while since I… I’d like to fight you some more.”

That was not the answer Jason was expecting. To be fair, Jason didn’t know what he was expecting, but certainly not that.

“It would be fun,” Talon added.

“Okay,” said Jason. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna explain this whole,” he gestured vaguely in Talon’s direction with the hand that wasn’t holding a gun, “setup. And then we can spar or something.”

“Really?”

He sounded legitimately excited. It was kind of cute. Jason should not be thinking that weird knife guys are cute.

“Yes, really.”

So Talon sat down next to him and began to explain. This was how Jason learned of the Court of Owls, a secretive society that pulled the strings behind everything in Gotham. (“Is it okay that you’re telling me this?” Talon only smiled. “It doesn’t matter who knows. There’s nothing you, or anyone else, can do about them.”) The Court made use of a group of highly trained assassins known as Talons to control their interests. (“So you’re Talon, but there are other Talons?” Jason asked. “Like I said,” Talon responded, “I don’t have a name, but I’m Talon.”) 

Members of the Court had sway over nearly everything that went on in Gotham. They orchestrated political movements and mafia turf conflicts. They had a stake in every level of municipal government and various private enterprises. And one of their ventures, apparently, was a language-learning app called Talonlingo. (“How exactly is that in the interests of an evil secret society?” “Data mining. So, so much data mining.”) 

Talons came from various places. Some were defectors from the League who were interested in more specific challenges. Others were kidnapped orphans, raised from an early age to become perfect killers. This particular Talon was probably the latter, as he very vaguely remembered his childhood and knew nothing about his parents. Jason remained silent at this revelation, unsure of what to say.

And all of them had different assignments. This Talon was assigned to menace and/or tutor a new Talonlingo Plus user studying Mandarin, one Jason Todd.

“That’s objectively a weird job,” said Jason. “Not that being an owl-shaped assassin isn’t weird in general, but like, you know. This is extra weird.”

Talon shrugged. “I’ve always been good at languages. And I think I kinda like the idea of teaching? Especially teaching Mandarin, it’s fun and you get to use knives a lot.”

Jason quirked an eyebrow.

“You’ve… always been good at languages?”

“Yeah. I’ve been able to speak French and Erromintxela since I was a kid, probably learned it pre-Talon. Being a multilingual kid, kind of sticks with you, you know? Changes the way you think about language, and somehow it just makes learning new ones easier. Mandarin isn’t too bad, the grammar is really intuitive.”

Erromintxela. Jason didn’t know a word of it, but he knew what it was, where it came from, roughly how many people spoke it. He wanted to say something, wanted to tell Talon that if he ever wanted to find out who his parents were, the number of Erromintxela speakers who lived in Gotham twenty-something years ago, or at any time really, could not possibly have been high. Someone in that small community would have heard something, known something, about a child going missing. There would be records.

But Talon must’ve always known that. Following that path must’ve always been an option. There was a reason he hadn’t gone looking for his real family, and it wasn’t Jason’s place to say anything.

“Yeah,” said Jason. “I, uh, I get that. So, you know, I gotta tell the boss about your whole evil Court of Owls thing. Not to be a narc, but he should probably know about that.”

“Who, Bruce Wayne?” asked Talon. “We know all about the Batman, and he knows about us. I suppose he… didn’t tell you about it?”

Jason rubbed the bridge of his nose. Typical Bruce, keeping weird and inappropriate secrets.

Talon tilted his head like an interested dog. “So can we fight now?”

A promise was a promise, Jason figured. “Sure. But uh, no weapons, okay?” 

“Aw.” Talon sounded disappointed, but nonetheless unstrapped his throwing knives. “I can drill you in Mandarin while we fight. It’ll count towards your Talonlingo XP points.”

——

Talon was gone by sunrise. Had to report back to the Court, apparently. Sparring on the rooftop had been fun, but it’d taken up much of the night, and now Jason was tired and sore. Also, evidently, he was beginning to realize he hadn’t really learned as much Mandarin in the last few weeks as he maybe should have.

Sure, he could count pretty high, up to ten thousand, and he definitely knew how to ask directions to the train station, but not too much beyond that. Besides finding a new weird sparring partner and/or friend, using Talonlingo hadn’t really accomplished all that much for him in terms of the Three Eyes mission. 

Bruce’s big dumb face loomed in his mind. Jason just couldn’t let down his old mentor, even if he was an emotionally stunted, self-righteous bastard. 

The problem was that learning Mandarin to the degree of proficiency he needed was just not possible in such a short amount of time. It wasn’t that Jason himself was lacking, it was that he’d been given an intractable task. That did make him feel a bit better about himself.

Also, maybe he’d just been going about it the wrong way. Maybe it was time to switch over to his Plan B: making someone else do it.

That night, he still intentionally hadn’t done his daily Talonlingo practice. He sat in his living room again, waiting for midnight, and only barely recoiled at the throwing knife Talon sent flying past his head as a means of greeting.

“Can we fight again?” asked Talon, barely able to control his excitement as he stepped in through the window.

Jason looked over at the knife now embedded in his couch upholstery.

“Actually,” he said, “I have a… proposition for you. Do you or the Court know anything about the Three Eyes?”

Talon perched on the windowsill. “I think so? They want to move drugs through the harbor. The Court isn’t really concerned, though, they’re considered a ‘negligible threat.’”

Good, thought Jason. No conflict of interest, then. 

“What are you doing on the night of January the sixth?”

Talon tilted his head. “If you re-up your Plus subscription through then, I imagine I’ll probably spend that night chasing after you with some knives.”

Jason legitimately wanted to smile at that. Something was wrong with him.

“Wanna come to a shitty party with me?” he asked. “Help me eavesdrop on some Three Eyes gangsters? That’s the whole reason I was learning Mandarin to begin with, but it’ll be a lot easier if you just come along and help.”

“And in exchange…?”

“I’ll fight you as much as you want. Also, you definitely owe me for saving us from those moles.”

Talon seemed to consider it.

Jason cleared his throat. “No promises, but, uh, I could even try to set it up so, you know, if it all goes well and we intercept the drug shipment and everything, at a later date, you could maybe… fight Batman?”

Talon instantly leapt up from his perch and extended an arm to shake Jason’s hand.

“It’s a deal! So can we spar now?”

Jason sighed. At least he’d figured it out.


	2. Chapter 2

“Jesus Christ, Jason.”

Babs sounded less-than-pleased. Jason had opted to let her know about this little modification to his plan. It was all well and good and very on-brand for the bats to keep secrets from each other, but he figured Babs would have found out sooner or later anyway, and maybe she’d have a more favorable reaction if Jason had been the one to tell her.

Maybe that was a miscalculation. On the video screen, Babs massaged her temples.

“So this is just a… a knife guy, and you know nothing about him, but he knows your whole identity and you’re bringing him on the Three Eyes mission as—as what? Your plus-one?”

Jason’s cover for the Penguin’s gala had been carefully crafted. He’d leveraged some of his old contacts to present himself as one extremely nondescript and forgettable John Mitchell, a former accountant for the Black Mask operation. 

Babs had ruthlessly shut down his other suggestions for a cover identity, including Mr. Spanky, a southern oil prospector, and Tason Jeter Podd, a local crime lord who liked to moonlight as the Red Snood. 

“Yeah!” said Jason. “He can be John Mitchell’s accountant buddy.”

He thought of Talon, perched birdlike on his kitchen counter, staring mistrustfully at his panini press. Talon could pass as an accountant, right?

“You really think so?”

Jason shrugged. “Uh, yeah. Totally. He’s a very normal… human… guy.”

“Do you actually trust this guy, or are you just trying to make my life miserable?”

Jason thought about the look on Talon’s face, eyes hidden behind goggles, when they sparred on the rooftop. There was no malice there, only a pure and joyful bloodlust. Laughing as he leapt through the night, childlike delight in every blow he landed. Talon was at once simple and complex. 

Jason considered whether there could be any ulterior motives to the man—if Talon were some kind of secret double agent, singularly adept at playing this extremely particular role to gain Jason’s sympathy and affection, ready to turn on him and his whole operation at any moment—and, if he were honest with himself, it was possible. It was always possible. All the bats were seasoned in the art of deception. But he wanted to trust Talon, for some reason he couldn’t quite identify. He wanted to believe in the good will this strange creature evidently fostered for him, even if just as a sparring partner. Jason liked that. It made him happy. That was weird.

“Let’s say I trust him like, 75%. Is that good enough for you?” asked Jason.

“That’s more than I trust you, so, yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

That’s what Jason liked about Babs. She was honest.

“Hey,” said Jason, “what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

Babs gave him a glare. “The worst thing that could happen? He’s actually an agent for the Three Eyes, or an alliance of the Court and the Three Eyes, or the Penguin, or any of our other enemies. He worms his way into your life in order to sabotage our mission. He goes to the gala with you and feeds you bad information, or just straight up exposes you. We can’t intercept the shipment. The Three Eyes move fifty million dollars’ worth of heroin through the city, and position themselves as a major player in narcotics trafficking in the Gotham metropolitan area. Your body gets tossed into the harbor.”

Jason considered it. “Yeah. I guess. But I feel like it’ll be fine.”

Babs rubbed her temples again. “Sure, Jason. Do you think he has formalwear?”

“Uhhh,” said Jason, trying to think of a pun he could make. Something about owls and formal occasions. Hooting? Hootenannies? “Uhhh.”

“Just… just send me his measurements, and I’ll order him an armored tuxedo like yours,” said Babs. She ended the call.

——

Getting Talon to stand still enough for Jason to measure him was something of a challenge. He fidgeted as Jason took out a measuring tape and had him raise his arms to get the width of his chest.

“So,” said Jason, trying to break the awkwardness of being so close to the other man’s body. “Do the Owls ever send you to black-tie events or anything?”

“Oh, lots,” said Talon. “Before the Talonlingo job. Didn’t dress up, though, or stay too long after my mission was complete.”

Assassinations, Jason knew. He was talking about assassinations where he’d been sent in to kill one or more particular people, swoop-and-stab. 

“I like when they have… the fountain,” Talon continued. “The one with the chocolate. You can put fruits in it.”

Jason chuckled as he measured down Talon’s arm from shoulder to wrist. “Yeah, the fountain with the chocolate is just called a chocolate fountain. I used to like ‘em when I was a kid, used to just stick my fingers in there. Now I steer clear of ‘em in case some grubby little kid’s already stuck his fingers in there.”

It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to being close to Talon’s body. They had wrestled with each other enough; it was one of the only arrangements in which Jason had a fighting advantage. Talon was incredibly fast and agile, but once he was pinned, Jason could usually overpower him through raw strength. Fighting was normal, though. It was a level of physicality Jason was very familiar with. Being so close and just… just brushing his fingers over the surface of Talon’s form-fitting suit, with no overtures at knocking the wind out of him or pulling him into a shoulder hold, that was something else.

Jason shifted the tape to measure around Talon’s pale neck. He tried not to make eye contact. He couldn’t, anyway, not with the goggles. He’d still never seen his eyes.

“You go to a lot of… of this kind of thing?” asked Talon. His voice sounded strange, as though he were also a bit uncomfortable.

“What, fancy parties? Yeah, I guess so,” said Jason. “I got, uh, I got sorta-adopted when I was a kid—”

“Bruce Wayne,” said Talon with a grin, twirling and ruining Jason’s waist measurement. “I told you, we know.”

“Hold still,” said Jason, placing a steady hand on the small of Talon’s back. He felt warm. “Yeah, so, I’ve been to my share of fancy shit. I used to hate it, but I don’t know, it’s easy to just ignore all the weird people and go straight for the food.”

“Cream puffs,” said Talon. “In a pile. With the caramel. I like those.”

It struck Jason then how similarly the two of them had interacted with the wealth of Gotham’s social elite. Whatever Talon’s origins had been, whatever he claimed to not remember, chances were he was from a normal family, probably impoverished, if the Court’s kidnapping habits were anything to go by. Take a child who won’t be missed, from the kind of neighborhood where it’s all part and parcel of the daily violence enacted upon the vulnerable. In another world, with a few different circumstances, Jason could’ve been the one taken by the Court.

Instead, he was swooped up by an eccentric billionaire with a penchant for dressing as a bat—which, if he were honest with himself, wasn’t all that different from what the Court of Owls did. 

But he liked his life. He liked meting out justice, his version of it, not Bruce’s. He wondered if Talon liked where he’d ended up as well.

Outseam, inseam, rise. Jason wrote down the measurements and tossed aside his tape. 

“Finished?” asked Talon, eagerly. “Can we fight now?”

Jason smiled. He really was getting to be endearing.

——

The night of the gala was bitterly cold, in the dead of winter, and Jason was truly not looking forward to spending the evening in Penguin’s freezing underground ice room. On top of his tuxedo he’d worn a heavy wool coat, and underneath his kevlar-lined dress trousers, he’d opted for thermal underwear. He wondered how much Babs would try to kill him if he wore fuzzy earmuffs. 

Really, he just wanted to remain indoors and not go outside at all.

But then Talon was there in his living room, having come in through the window as usual, cutting a magnificent figure in a dark suit and what appeared to be a fur-lined opera cloak. It was dramatic and excessive and then Jason saw him, for the first time not wearing his hood and goggles, bright eyes the color of a storm, his terrible face so beautiful that Jason felt the world fall away for a moment.

“You look nice,” Jason choked out.

“Thanks!”

“Car,” said Jason. “Let’s car. Let’s go to the car.”

——

It was too cold for Jason to want to ride his bike, so for the occasion he’d borrowed one of Bruce’s most unremarkable-yet-fancy cars, an older black Bentley with a suspension that made him feel like he was driving on butter. It was the kind of car that wouldn’t be out of place in the valet parking of a Penguin villain gala.

“Do you remember your cover story?” asked Jason. He was starting to remember how to speak again.

“I’m Robert Miller,” said Talon. “I’m a friend of John Mitchell’s. We like… accounting.”

And that was the whole story. They were accountants. They were experienced in bookkeeping for the most discreet of Gotham’s organized crime cohort, which made them slightly more interesting than regular above-the-board accountants, but even then, Jason had found that most people automatically tuned out of the conversation once he got as far as “Nice to meet you, I’m an accountant.”

Of course, Tim Drake had given him a whole spiel about how the accountant was the most critical figure in any criminal organization, as they held all the secrets that often the big bosses didn’t completely know about, and usually knew where to find a paper trail. Jason had tuned out of that conversation fairly early on, though.

“How boring are you?” asked Jason.

“Very boring,” said Talon.

“What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?” asked Jason.

“Vanilla,” said Talon. 

“What’s your favorite TV show?” asked Jason.

“The Office,” said Talon.

“Good.”

Just two ordinary crime accountants, minding their own business. Quiet background figures ready to patiently mill around a crime party. Jason’s life was weird.

“I actually do like vanilla ice cream,” said Talon. “I like ice cream.”

Jason grinned. Seemed his little assassin friend had a bit of a sweet tooth. “I’ll buy you some after the mission.”

Penguin’s underground ice cave didn’t particularly put Jason in the mood for frozen desserts, though. He probably went a little too far with the whole Antarctic bird persona thing, and Jason hoped there wouldn’t be cocktail glasses full of krill served as an hors d'oeuvre. The actual location of the event was in an expansive room in the basement of an abandoned building in the heart of the Meatpacking District, in all likelihood a repurposed slaughterhouse. Not foreboding at all.

They filed in through the upstairs entrance, well aware that there must be a surveillance system covering all points of ingress, scanning their faces and verifying that they were, indeed, on the guest list, and not just weird party crashers at a wintertime meeting of Gotham’s most eccentric villainry, plus special guests from Tianjin. Babs, of course, had secured both Jason and Talon’s admittance to the Penguin’s esteemed list of guests, conjuring up solid criminal accounting backgrounds for them. They’d been invited by another accountant named Bill Perkins, who was apparently an expert in price modeling and capital budgeting. 

Jason had hoped the ice cave would be at least a bit warmer than the outside, but he was sadly disappointed. The interior of the cave was ornately decorated with fucking ice sculptures, most of which were either excessively flattering depictions of the Penguin himself, or detailed scenes of Antarctic life.

Jason had been about to turn to Talon and make a joke about how fitting it was that it was all slowly melting, when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, someone he recognized. Jason could feel his blood pressure rise.

“Stay here,” Jason told Talon, and stormed towards her general direction.

She was bundled up in a large puffy coat that made her look a bit like a big purple Michelin man, and she was talking to what appeared to be literally a polar bear, but she was definitely Stephanie Brown.

Bruce had, apparently, sent him a babysitter. 

Also, the polar bear was apparently quite capable of human speech, and was chatting happily about a vacation to Benidorm.

“Sorry to spoil your conversation,” Jason said, interrupting the bear, “I need to speak to my friend for a moment.”

“Excuse us,” said Steph, with a nervous laugh.

They waited as the bear ambled away.

“What the fuck,” said Steph. “What the fuck do you want?”

“Did Bruce send you? Is that why you’re here? To keep an eye on me?”

Steph looked at him as though she wanted to crush all his vital organs with her bare hands.

“No, I’m on my own case. What are talking about?”

Oh.

“Oh,” said Jason. “I thought… Bruce sent me here to do a thing, with some gang, and I thought hey maybe sent you to like, be my custodian ‘cos he doesn’t trust me to do it by myself. Just watch me and make sure I don’t fuck it up or kill somebody again.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Steph, “Jason, did you really think I’d agree to… to babysit you? I don’t give a shit about you.”

Bless Stephanie Brown, thought Jason.

“I’m here with Guillaume Polaire, the guy you just saw. He’s got some information about a diamond smuggling operation, and we’re meeting with one of his contacts tonight.”

“You’re on a completely separate case,” said Jason, still slowly feeling himself come down from his earlier rush of anger. “Was that a talking polar bear?”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Yeah, obviously I’m on a separate case. And yeah, he’s genetically modified. He—oooh, a fight!”

Jason glanced over and saw one of the nightmare scenarios he’d tried to plan for: Talon was apparently fighting someone, and had repurposed a set of stainless steel fondue forks as throwing knives. His opponent, a large bald man in a tailored suit and eyepatch, was attempting to use a large icicle as some kind of spear. A crowd of exceedingly well-dressed gala guests were beginning to gather around them.

Shit.

“Twenty bucks on the little guy,” said Steph, as Jason rushed towards the commotion. “Hey, wait!”

The crowd gasped, but Jason could no longer see what exactly was happening in the fight. Only as he neared its epicenter could he see that Talon’s opponent was extremely, definitively dead on the ground, chest stabbed through with a metal skewer.

“Shit,” said Jason, and without thinking he grabbed Talon by the wrist and pulled him out of the gaggle of morbid onlookers who circled round now, trying to catch a glimpse of the dead man’s body. Jason hoped the bustle and confusion would provide them enough cover.

“I did the thing,” said Talon cheerily, as though not realizing he’d literally just killed a guy who was in all likelihood a well-connected Gotham criminal, who’d probably have people after him now for revenge. Jason knew the feeling, and could attest that Talon’s cheerfulness was absolutely not appropriate.

“I got the information,” Talon chirped, as Jason rushed him up the stairs and out onto the street. Jason looked behind them. 

“Why isn’t anyone chasing us? Who was that guy?”

“Xiong ge, one of the leaders of the Three Eyes,” said Talon. “He recognized me from one time when his cousin was trying to learn Spanish. He wanted to see if he could beat me in a fight. He told me he was an immortal, but then he wasn’t.”

Jason groaned as he unlocked the car, flung himself into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The dead man’s followers were probably taking some time to come to terms with how dead their supposedly-immortal leader was.

“You killed a gang-and/or-cult leader,” he murmured, almost to himself. The mission had been ruined in a particularly spectacular fashion. All while Jason had been too distracted by his own issues. This was his fault. While worrying that Bruce didn’t trust him, he’d gone and proven himself to be completely unworthy of that trust. 

“Oh my god,” Jason continued, pulling out into the street and choosing an arbitrary direction to drive in—anywhere to get as far away from this place as possible. “Were his people around? Did they hear you? See you?”

“I don’t know! But he told me about the shipment!” said Talon. “He told me in exchange for getting me to fight him, I didn’t want to fight him, he didn’t look like he’d be very fun, and he wasn’t fun at all, but I know you wanted to know about the shipment so I found out about the shipment. It’s tonight in three hours at dock 36 on the west pier in someplace called Bludhaven. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

The way Talon looked at Jason reminded him of a guilty dog. 

“Yeah,” said Jason quietly, mentally trying to map out the best route to Bludhaven. “You, uh, you did well. I don’t know if we’ve got time to get ice cream before it goes down tonight, though. But you did well.”

It wasn’t anything like what they’d planned for. They’d wanted to discreetly and gently come across the information through eavesdropping and subterfuge, not have it grandly foisted over just prior to a very obvious public fight resulting in a cult-and/or-gang leader’s death. It was all too high-profile. They could move to a different location, or increase security—he dutifully pinged Babs through his earpiece, now working again with clear reception, and told her enough details as he could bear.

Mostly that they’d obtained the information but had not been at all discreet about it. She could find out later, in her own time, that somebody was dead. 

“Are you mad at me?” asked Talon, after a protracted silence.

Jason didn’t look away from the road. He wasn’t mad—he was mostly just happy Talon was safe, they were both safe, that nothing exceedingly bad had happened. He’d gone into this knowing he was putting Talon in some level of danger, though he knew the man would be able to handle himself quite easily. Still his responsibility though.

“No,” said Jason. “I’m just… I just wasn’t expecting it to go down like that. It’s fine though. I’m not mad at you.”

“I killed him,” said Talon. 

“Yeah.”

“I thought the Bats didn’t like killing.”

Oh boy. Jason grunted.

“The Bats don’t all agree on everything.”

“Oh,” said Talon. “So… You know that wasn’t the first person I killed, right?”

“Yeah,” said Jason. “I know. I did some research on you. Your history is, uh, impressive.”

And it really was. Jason had enlisted Tim in helping him find out everything he possibly could about his new language-teaching friend, and found a really astonishing trail of high-profile assassinations sharing certain forensic commonalities. There were many Talons, but this one—his particular Talon—was singularly talented. He wasn’t discreet, not like the others. He liked to show off. And despite his impressive kill count, the murder scenes left little indication that he especially enjoyed the violence. The joy was all in dramatically leaping from rooftops and balconies, not in landing decisive strikes.

So Talon had killed people, lots of them, mostly politicians and businesspeople who’d crossed the Court in some way. Some of them had been unsuspecting people with an incidentally contrary agenda, but most were deep into the corrupt machinery of Gotham’s upper echelon, and had arrogantly thought themselves above the reaches of the Court. To be honest, Gotham was probably better off without some of them. But deserving to die wasn’t the frame through which Jason wanted to analyze this whole phenomenon. Talon didn’t deserve to be forcibly drafted into the assassination business. It was unjust to expect him, an unwitting footsoldier, to abstain from lethal violence when the same expectation was not placed upon the dysfunctional social establishment that had enabled his circumstances. 

That was a lecture Jason had shouted at Bruce a couple hundred times already. He didn’t think it was necessary to go into it now.

“You did research? On me?”

Talon sounded flattered. He was smiling.

This was not flirting. They were not flirting.

“Yeah. You’re, uh, you’re good at what you do.”

“I just take orders,” said Talon.

So do I, for the most part, thought Jason.

“Do you like… do you like what you do?” Jason asked. He knew Talon had been forced into the profession as a child, and probably would never be able to evaluate how exactly he felt about being an assassin.

“It’s not like I could have a normal job,” said Talon. “And I get to meet interesting people. So it could be worse, I guess.”

“Cool,” said Jason, feeling like an idiot for not knowing what else to say.

At this time of night, the highway was near-deserted, and they sped down the highway towards Bludhaven with little traffic interruption until they were nearing the city proper. Bludhaven had two primary industries, shipping and casinos, and the gaudy hallmarks of a sparkly casino town were apparent in the ugly “Welcome to Bludhaven: America’s Playground!” signs in big reflective letters. A neon shark waved in the distance.

And maybe Bludhaven was, in a way, America’s playground, if it were a creepy decrepit playground full of crumbling swingsets and drug deals. It was a destination for people who thought Las Vegas was too subtle. 

It wasn’t all that surprising that the Three Eyes were moving narcotics through the port here; the casinos brought in hundreds of thousands of visitors looking to indulge in all their vices. Jason’s own addict mother used to mumble about how it was better to be a dope fiend in Gotham than in that hellhole, Bludhaven. The woman had standards. What a shitty fuckin’ city.

“So many lights,” said Talon, gazing towards the illuminated marquee of a casino. 

“You’ve never been here before?” asked Jason.

“I’ve never left Gotham,” said Talon. “This place—Bludhaven? It’s so different,” he said, looking stunned and awed at the flashing lights.

“Yeah, it’s tacky as hell,” said Jason.

“I like it.”

“You’re tacky as hell, too. Hey, what are you doing?”

Talon had grabbed a bag from the backseat, and was now apparently undressing.

“Changing into my regular clothing,” he said, pulling his brown-and-gold suit from out of his bag. “I can’t wear this if we’re going to fight anyone challenging. This suit is so stiff. Restrictive.”

Jason politely kept his eyes on the road.

——

Babs had tracked down the ship that was meant to dock in the location in question, and verified that its destination had not been updated. There was a certain hubris in that, Jason thought, but these were gangsters who believed their leaders were deities, so maybe that was all part of it. 

The unexpected demise of Xiong ge hadn’t affected the operation too much; he wasn’t supposed to be overseeing the shipment tonight, anyway. Rather, the leader running point on this one was a small round man, also wearing an eyepatch, named Zhu ge. Jason recognized him instantly from the dossier.

Donning his helmet, it didn’t take too long for Jason to subdue Zhu ge and his crew with rubber bullets, while Talon watched happily and politely applauded.

Jason had been thinking this whole job was a bit too easy; they could just tie up the gangsters and then arrange a drop-off with Babs to get the drugs properly disposed of, lest wacky Bludhaven authorities discover the stash and parcel it off to sell it themselves, because Bludhaven cops were just kind of like that. 

Appropriately, that was when the third leader of the Three Eyes showed up with a fucking grenade launcher. His name was Hu ge, and also wore an eyepatch. This was a very literal gang and/or cult. Hu ge was also extremely bad at firing his grenade launcher.

Jason dove behind a shipping container as Talon handily dispatched Hu ge with a throwing knife between the eyes, all while the goons in the general vicinity suffered heavy misdirected fire from a man who clearly was not equipped to fire heavy weaponry.

“Yeesh,” said Jason, as he came back out to survey the carnage. “That didn’t go well.”

Talon spotted one of the Three Eyes’ footsoldiers, whose entire top half had been entirely blown off. 

“Jason, do you think anyone could identify this guy’s body?”

“Uh, maybe not, why? Wait, what are you doing?”

Talon had approached the body, and he was beginning to undress it. “I think I’m going to die tonight,” he said. “Help me get his pants off.”

——

“I’m dead,” said Talon. “The Court’s going to assume I died in the explosion.”

The two of them drove back to Gotham, looking like a strange pair. There was blood on much of Jason’s clothing, and in Talon’s hair, but Talon had changed back into his fitted suit and looked just about ready to go to another black-tie gala. His regular brown-and-gold suit had been bisected and left on what remained of a dead gangster’s body.

“I’m free,” he said softly.

It was still taking a while for Jason to get a total grasp on everything that had really happened tonight, how major of a decision Talon had just made for himself. Jason’s heart swelled.

Jason scratched his neck. “So, uh, I told you that I did some research on you. I might’ve found out some stuff about your past, like from before you became a Talon. And uh, since you’re not a Talon any more, I figure I shouldn’t call you that anymore, and I should—”

“My real name’s Richard Grayson. I’ve known for a while.”

Huh. So he’d looked into it after all. Jason knew he shouldn’t’ve underestimated his little assassin friend.

“All right. So, can I call you Richard?”

“Could you call me Dick, actually?”

Jason blinked. “What?”

“Dick,” said Dick. “My name is Dick.”

“I don’t want to call you that,” said Jason. 

“Too bad, it’s my name,” said Dick, propping his legs up on the dashboard and crossing them.

“That’s not a good name. What’s your problem with Richard?”

Dick shrugged. “I don’t feel like a Richard. I feel like a Dick. Don’t I feel like a Dick to you?”

“Oh god,” said Jason. “Are you doing this just to annoy me?”

“My name is Dick,” said Dick. “It’s just an extra perk that it annoys you. Also, I think I wanna live here in Bludhaven for a while, once I get settled. It’s nice.”

Jason grunted. “Dick does sound like a good name for some asshole who thinks Bludhaven is nice.”

“I had fun tonight,” said Dick, curling up in his passenger’s seat like a pleased cat.

“Good for you.”

“I think I want to be a vigilante,” he said.

Jason groaned. “Do you want me to… to teach you, or something?”

“I would like that very much. I would also really like it if we kissed, because that seems like something you’ve been wanting to do for a while, and I’ve been waiting for it to happen but now I’m starting to think that despite your fighting abilities, you’re actually quite a coward.”

Jason thought about driving straight into the ocean.

But he was like, a little bit happy about it too.


End file.
